Wedding Flashback: The 1920's

The Great Gatsby, Art Deco, and the Roaring 20's have been a huge wedding styling trend through the last year or two. I've been enjoying all the vintage, glamorous looks of these weddings, but it made me start to think, "What was it really like back then?" 

Turns out, the modern wedding really started to develop almost a century ago in the 1920's. Department stores started having "Bridal Departments" for all the bride's wedding needs, formally catered parties became all the rage, wedding photographers were a MUST for the first time, and Marshal Fields in Chicago even set up the first wedding gift registry in 1924! You even started finding the first few professional wedding planners in the 1920's, even though they were reserved for only the wealthiest of families.

This is also when the trend of non-church weddings really became popular, most brides opting for a Justice of the Peace in their backyard instead. Ceremonies were typically solemn, stiff, and mainly meant to please the "olds" before the raucous party were the "olds" weren't even invited! The young people ignored prohibition and drank moonshine and punch with bathtub gin making these parties even wilder! Music was danced to well into the night and would even continue after the newlyweds excused themselves. 

Tight corsets were finally a thing of the past and brides took the liberty to wear loose fitting, comfortable dresses, many of which only came to their knees. Veils, however, were over the top! Since the dresses were typically short, the veil had to be long enough to work as a train, and they were usually topped with floral caps that could cover their short hair. Bouquets were statement pieces often being picked from the family's garden that day for maximum fragrance, they were gathered in a small basket that the bride would carry down the aisle with her before dropping it off with her mother as she passed.